JEFF TRUE For the Love of Horses

For the Love of Horses

From Tarleton to Ruidoso Downs

BY PHIL RIDDLE

Jeff True discovered two things as a Tarleton student.

Hard work and a love for horses.

He came to the university as a cowboy. He’d worked at cattle ranches during his summers in high school and had shown cattle for a few years.

But it was his time in Tarleton’s horse production program that led him to his passion and his career.

That’s where the hard work came in.

In the summer between his junior and senior years, an area ranch donated a dozen pasture-bred yearlings so Tarleton students could get hands-on experience in breeding and managing horses.

“I knew then that’s what I wanted to do,” says True, now general manager at Ruidoso Downs Race Track in New Mexico. “That was the toughest year of my life.”

Between classroom obligations and work with the university herd, True accumulated enough hours on the job to tackle an internship at an Oklahoma stud farm, followed by a job buying and selling thoroughbreds in California.

Tarleton’s horse production program had an advisory board that introduced students to industry professionals. This fact alone, True said, gave him his career.

Program head Dr. Lester Waymack and the late Dr. Don Henneke had worked at commercial breeding farms prior to their time at Tarleton, with industry connections that added a dimension to the educational experience.

“I felt well prepared, between the professors, the exposure to the business and the actual hands-on horsemanship,” True recalls. “We sale-prepped yearlings from The Waggoner Ranch, and we sold horses from the university ranch — horses we bred, raised and foaled. That gave me a pretty good foundation in the business.”

After graduating, True spent four years in the thoroughbred trade in California and later worked in group sales at the iconic Santa Anita Park before serving as executive director of the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Racing Association and then the Texas Quarter Horse Association.

Now he has returned to a familiar site in Ruidoso. Having sold horses there in the 1980s and ’90s, he knew the surroundings when the new Ruidoso Downs owners asked him last summer to become general manager. He also spent 14 years as president or vice president of three different horse racing-related technology companies. He said those leadership experiences and global exposure were integral in his career.

“Jeff rose to the top fairly quickly,” partner Stan Sigman said, speaking for the group that runs the venture. “While all our partners are accomplished businessmen with extensive experience in the horse industry, none of us have any experience in the very complex business of operating a racetrack.”

True credits much of his success in equine ventures to his training at Tarleton.

“The quality of the campus, the quality of the education, is clearly the biggest draw,” he said. “Being a part of The Texas A&M University System has advantages, too.”

His daughter recently became the second member of the family to earn a Tarleton degree. A software project consultant in the home healthcare industry, Courtney True graduated in 2014 with a bachelor’s in agriculture.

“I have nothing but good memories of Tarleton,” her dad said. “I really had a good time there, and my education proved to be the right one.”